Software behemoth Microsoft could be one of the biggest losers from proposed license changes to the Linux operating system unveiled Wednesday. That's a possible outcome of updates to the license pushed by the FSF. The FSF wants to make mutually exclusive pacts such as the Novell-Microsoft open-source agreement a violation of the next iteration of the GNU GPL, the license that governs Linux use. "It is unfortunate that the FSF is attempting to use the GPLv3 to prevent future collaboration among industry leaders to benefit customers," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's vice president of intellectual property and licensing.

if one looks at it this way, a humble guy from Finland would make the largest OS software company reach for money and desperate measures, who saw this coming 5 years ago? yes some said so, but who believed them? Microsoft did not think of OSS as a threat before 2003 there abouts.. not really, now there are doing deals, trying to be more open, loosing large accounts to OSS and so on.

if one looks at it this way, a humble guy from Finland would make the largest OS software company reach for money and desperate measures, who saw this coming 5 years ago? yes some said so, but who believed them? Microsoft did not think of OSS as a threat before 2003 there abouts.. not really, now there are doing deals, trying to be more open, loosing large accounts to OSS and so on.

Without wishing to sound like one of those boring FSF "call it GNU/Linux"-types... what's caused this is not "one humble guy from Finland" but many thousands of coders from all over the world, working on thousands of bits of free software. The "Linux" system is much bigger than just the kernel.

Also there is a good chance that changes made in GNU GPLv3 are not going to affect linux at all.
Linus has previously said that he won't re-license linux to GNU GPLv3 and even though he has stated that he is 'pretty pleased' with the new draft. He still seems to have some issues with it.

One of the main reasons not to refer to GNULinux as just Linux is to avoid confusion. The other being to respect the developers of the original userspace tools.

Agreed and that's just what the OP of this little thread overlooked. Microsoft or any other proprietary software company (e. g. Tivo) is not worried about Open Source Software, they have shown that they are perfectly able and willing to circumvent the provisions coming with OSS. Free and Open Source Software under the GPL3 on the other hand will hopefully not be so easy to subvert and that's why they are making such a noise.

The very opposition of Microsoft et al. to the new GPL3 is the best proof that the FSF is doing something right there.